"Now, who is that government going to find as a more interesting target for further surveillance, those who records can be accessed on demand if they want them, or those who are hiding their activity."
That's a fallacious argument.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu.
THIS^ is the way most intel agencies operate. A few years back in Sweden an electrician had been communicating with a customer re a job. He'd used technical jargon and explained his explosive migraine made it impossible to finish the job today. He and his wife woke to find their door kicked in and masked individuals aiming rifles at their children. Not an experience I'd wish on anyone and one where tragedy was averted by luck alone.
The safest is to not provide anyone the ability to read anything you send - because the algorithm flagging keywords can't read context. Your communications being unreadable may or may not raise eyebrows somewhere but they also won't risk triggering enough unfortunate keywords to have a message sent to the local SWAT team with your address and a Code Red assault order.
"Let me guess, this narrative is being pushed by ISP's, data brokers and others that would like easy access to tracking all of your internet searches/history."
Probably not. Ten years ago implementation of encryption of any kind was often suspect at best and most routers were even leakier sieves than they are today. Some browsers might as well have come with built-in backdoors given the way they handled https, and too damn many webpages were still on old plaintext http.
That said VPN's still have a great deal of use today. It just isn't ubiquitously necessary.
VPN's still have a lot of use but given their popularity in a world where governments compete to be the next DDR Caveat Emptor applies more than ever before.
"Hey, don't lump Winnie-the-Pooh in with the ex tangerine in chief."
True that. I may not care much for his Beariness Emperor Xi but I'll at least credit the thin-skinned fellow with more moxie than the average toddler. Can't say the same for Il Duce Arancione.
"The point of regulation is to (a) satisfy those who think private firms are inherently evil and need restraint over and above the ordinary rules of honest business (honor contracts, don't mislead, don't steal, don't lie, don't screw people, etc.)"
You mean, like Eisenhower did?
Yes, private corporations are inherently amoral. Given the opportunity most of them will gladly traffic children if doing so would get them better margins this quarter and it didn't land them in hot water. We really don't need more evidence on this by now.
And the thing is, that is how a corporation is supposed to work. The one and only thing they should care about is the profit provided the shareholders.
Take a long, good luck at the US today. Show me one single example where the business model isn't primarily made of grift. Where a single major company wouldn't be willing to pour poison in the water mains if it meant raising the Q1 profit.
"while (b) ensuring that the industry is successful and profitable (whether it deserves to be or not)"
I reference 2008-2009. Where lack of regulation resulted in a collapse which suddenly forced two presidents from either extreme end of the aisle to compete in bailing the major industries out because the 401(k)'s of the common citizen was pending on those industries not collapsing. Classical old republicans hauled out the old line about how everyone was a keynesian now.
"(c) providing a mechanism to erect barriers to entry to new firms who'd like to lower prices or innovate, which could lead to existing players seeing reduced profit or a lot of work."
Again, back here in the real world history paints a different picture where, once again, lack of regulations is what has provided businesses the monopoly status carrying the ability to run the newcomers out of business.
I honestly don't get it, OldMugWump. You people live in the reality which has given all those three assertions of yours the lie.
While europeans, living in incredibly regulated markets, are offered more choice than ever at lower prices and higher quality. Just when did the US begin parroting the blind old propaganda of the USSR about their failing system? Because I know for a fact that as recent as Eisenhower you guys were singing a completely different tune.
"ya right.. lets throw trillions of dollars at social bs... that can't be maintained..."
You realize the rest of the G20 does exactly that, and we maintain it just fine.
I shouldn't be surprised that Every. Damn. Time universal health care, decent living wages or helping the poor comes up, some alt-right fsckwit shows up and tells us it's impossible for the US to do what the rest of the world has successfully lived with for fifty years or more.
"just because you have wealth, status, plenty of activities, and mobility, doesn't mean that criminal activity is off the table."
If poor people commit 99% of crimes and the wealthy perform 1% of crimes that's not a valid comparison.
There is no higher driver of criminality than poverty. Doubting that stopped being a thing among educated people three centuries ago.
It always gets me, how a certain type of witless asshat can keep advocating forking over ten pounds of cure, to the tune of gagging bagfuls of money, rather than spend a tenth that amount on prevention.
"Politicians love to “treat” symptoms without thinking about treating (or discovering) their root cause."
Root causes are expensive, complex and require persistent treatment.
Far simpler just to prescribe some aspirin.
If you are a successful politician you may have picked the proper base to address - the one happier with the aspirin providing the appearance of relief than with the idea they'll have to vote you in for two terms more and wait for that time until you provide the result.
If you're a successful and hard-working politician you may have picked a base sufficiently educated and patient so as to appreciate a quick fix is never a solution.
And if you're a grifter your base will be happy enough as soon as you can point the finger at some random minority and tell them "those guys" are to blame for all their ills...and they'll cheerfully self-medicate on grievance, forgetting all their daily woes.
"That China, like all of you, applaud Twitter and Facebook's censoring of people."
I wish this was the first time I had to tell some alt-right fsckwit there's a difference between a government with violence monopoly prohibiting certain speech for everyone and a private entity tossing the unpleasant asshole out of their house.
Just reminding you that you people are still being morons.
"China reads Orwell's "1984" and responds with "Pffft....hold my baijiu""
Of course they will. They invented the "1984" society in Qin Shi Huang's days and never looked back. Difference being that their desire for control and social order is based in pragmatism. Millennia of famines, revolutions, uprisings, weak governments, and warlordism have shaped what they have today - a recipe ensuring the majority of the citizenry have access to education, opportunity, commerce, and prosperity while using the minority as patsies, scapegoats and warning examples unto others.
As long as you are a "proper" chinese...productive, educated, dedicated to social ideals...your life will be good under the benevolent Divine Ursine, son of heaven. Cater to the 90% and ensure their well-being. Throw everyone who won't fall in line under the bus.
Whenever some movement arises which has adherents thinking of that movement first, China second; Sects. Buddhists. Shaolin monks. Triads. Falun Gong. Tibetans. Uighyr. Etc...come down on them like a ton of bricks.
China's government and all its representatives being excessively thin-skinned is part and parcel of this; Never let anyone doubt the current order. National face must be preserved at all cost.
FTFY. Information control, censorship, coming down hard on dissidents and citizens of China desiring autonomy...is millennia old.
And the PRC was communist the same way it was mongol - a brief historical aberration in a coup or revolution, and then straight back to the oligarchic ultra-authoritarianism they've always had.
You can look at Taiwan before the 70's for a glance at how China normally operates under a strong leader. It wasn't until Chang Kai-shek bit the dust and Taiwan had heavy interaction with western values that they adopted a functional form of democracy. And even there you can tell from the common free-form brawling in their assemblies that they really haven't gotten used to not having a central authority keep the room to order.
I kid you not. Go to youtube. Search for "taiwan parliamentary brawl"...watch the scrolling pages of clips featuring politicians én másse partaking in the Fight Club over every issue.
"...they're increasingly more like Nazis, especially considering they're literally a step away from doing Holocaust 2: Muslim Edition."
There's nothing "increasing" about it. And no, the closest contemporary form of nazism today would be the US GOP base. China has a rational, albeit horrible reason to do what they do. Same as the reason they came down on Falun Gong, Tibetan monks, Hong Kong believers in individual freedoms, and Winnie The Pooh.
Same as why they in olden days as an empire cracked down on buddhists, sects, and shaolin temples.
Face. Social order. A nation united.
China must appear undivided and culturally hegemonous. Every citizen of China must be a proper citizen of ancient Hua Xia. The government - whether emperors past or his present exalted Beariness - must be respected. Social order is to be preserved, unrest and dissent proactively destroyed.
This recipe is what has kept China as a nation in more or less unbroken cultural unity as a single country for thousands of years.
And the problem with telling them differently is this; You try telling a chinese politician about the merits of democracy and they will gently ask you to point out one single democracy of size to have lasted more than 500 years. You'll be able to point at a few flyspeck republics not all that democratic and of course to San Marino...and that's it. Not too surprising given that actual democracy didn't come back in vogue until about two centuries ago.
The chinese politician will likely say something along the lines of "It sounds intriguing. Can you get back to us in a thousand years or so? We'll have another look then".
China's cruelty is rooted in a pragmatic approach to order über alles which on good days comes off as a thoroughly unprincipled approach to do whatever it takes to ensure some 90% of the country is too well fed, educated and prosperous to even dream of opposing the government. While using the remaining 10% as patsies, scapegoats and examples made why it's not healthy to compare Emperor Xi to Winnie the Pooh. It's ugly. Cruel. But it works.
The same can not be said about nazism which is rooted out of a pseudo-religious tangle of lies peddled to convince the least educated and impoverished no-hope losers they are the "Chosen people" unfairly oppressed by some minority who are simultaneously subhuman inferiors AND strangely able to wield superhuman powers of oppression over the majority in the "superior" race.
Nazism only works until it's burned out every feckless moron dumb enough to believe in it since it inevitably comes into conflict with factual reality and science.
China's autocracy otoh, seems to work pretty well for the most part if what you want is a cohesive national entity remaining largely unchanged for a few millennia.
"When one of the options for a political office is Trump it's near impossible not to offer a better choice."
In reality, yes.
Look at what that base consists of though. We're looking at a lot of people with piss-poor or spotty education who were the ones hit the hardest by Reagan. And have been repeatedly told by the grifter of their choice that everything they've suffered is the democrats fault since they were old enough to walk.
Adherents of the american cult of ignorance Asimov wrote off, who grew up to believe education was unamerican - only to find out that without a college degree the only job they could hold was one they'd have to spend ten hour working days on to make ends meet.
To get through the day they self-medicate on that cheap and readily available drug of grievance they are fed in such bountiful supply by the GOP.
The democrats could win that base over, no sweat. They just have to stop talking in big words and start telling the GOP base whom to hate in simple catchy one-liners and talking points.
The better choice doesn't even have to do with politics, facts, or the prosperity of the citizenry now. It revolves around the candidate able to come up with the best chant to hold daily two minute hate sessions around.
"Unfortunately, since its inception, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been irreparably tainted by its use as a political instrument."
In smaller scale plenty of countries have found their immigration bureaus tainted from the start. Apparently setting up an agency dedicated to keeping, mainly, non-white foreigners out of the country attracts a lot of people dedicated to racist ideals.
I refer to you the sentence the AC led with; "Regarding the 'compromised security' claim. It's simply not true that the only ones complaining about it are publishers."
This is where he gives credence to the "compromised security" claim from the publishers.
As others have also noted, his reasoning is...a bit skewed in the importance he places on "bulk downloading".
Yes, stolen credentials can be a hazard depending on the access those credentials provide.
But I have enough of a background in both STEM and IT to tell you that the access allowing bulk downloads of scientific articles do not pose a threat to the network. That part is bullshit from start to end.
A "threat" comes from credentials which allow vectors of attack or access to confidential documents. If the user network consists of more than ten people a presumptive attacker having similar access is already taken for granted and the network hardened against this precise eventuality.
The thing which raises my hackles here is that the AC describes a situation which could never happen. The credentials "stolen" would be the access login to Elsevier's page - not the university network.
There is only one thing threatening that university network - Elsevier going bananas over bulk downloads and demanding the university come down like a ton of bricks on whatever researcher shared their login and password to Elsevier's pages with undergrads and postdocs. A legal threat, nothing to do with security.
"Shut the fuck up with your crap, all you're doing is heading down Koby-lane..."
Look through some of "Restless94110"'s commentary. He's way beyond Koby-lane.
By now I assume he only shows up here to copy-paste some argument which went down real well in his normal Stormfront forum and he still doesn't grok why anyone outside of that place refuses to give him the reciprocal reacharound over him stroking their egos by affirming their beliefs in the dystopian fairy tale they cling to.
The only thing he brings to the table is a reminder that the alt-right left their sanity by the roadside years back.
"...you essentially have to start from the position that either the democrats across the country are vastly smarter and more able to plan than the republicans involved, the republicans involved are incredibly stupid and easy to fool, or a mix of the two."
Less entertaining when you consider that exact scenario is one of the more telling defining characteristics of fascists; The opposition is simultaneously contemptibly weak, feeble-minded and easily intimidated cowards - while at the same time being capable of persistent superhuman feats of power when it comes to oppressing the "Chosen Ones".
I refer to you here the nazi mythology of the jewish untermensch along with their belief that subhuman epitome of cowardice and short-sighted self-destructive greed managed to rule the damn world through super-secret shadow cabals.
Just recall Marjorie Taylor-Greene's "Jewish space lasers". In the eyes of the conspiracy nut the "opposition" is always portrayed as a superhuman capable of mind control and time travel while having access to super sci-fi technology. While being "inferior".
"'There's no solid evidence because the other side is way smarter than us' makes for an interesting argument/own-goal to say the least."
I used to counter neo-nazi conspiracy nuts with the statement "Gosh, we all need to convert to judaism. If you are to be believed we get super-powers and access to the Death Star if we do".
"There's usually not only 2 sides to any discussion, so if you pretend any debate is binary you're already on a losing track."
That too, to be sure.
But the trend right now isn't that there are more than two sides. It's that one side uses factual reality as a basis and the other irately demands something be done about the invisible unicorns messing up the equally unperceivable ley lines in the back yard of the imperceptible sky wizard.
Democrat politician: "Let us discuss the deplorable state of health care and the pandemic to which more than 800000 americans have fallen in a mere two years..."
Republican grifter: "Screw your lies! What are we going to do about Liberal Sauron's man-eating orc horde about to emerge from Mordor and KILL US ALL ANY DAY NOW?!"
Republican grifter #2: "Ah heard they dun trafficked Red Riding Hood! We gun' defund the poh-leese when dat shit happens?"
Republican grifter #3: "It's the wrath of GOD! Repent, Sinners! And give all your money to the Chosen One that he may build us a wall against the unholy forces of the mexican rapist!"
There's not a plurality of sides in a debate here...It's one side bringing facts to the table and another side flipping that table while belting out dystopian fairy tales and thinly veiled reruns of Der Stürmer. If you could have described it as one side just being less credible I, for one, would be happy.
But you can't. The reality is that there are no two sides because there's only one side trying to debate. The other is shitting on the table and howling at the moon.
"Freedom of expression means that anybody who chooses do so should be entitled to listen to both sides before making up their own opinion, rather than being forced to have the government do that for them."
That would be a good point to make...if there were "two sides" in most of these debates. And I'll take ad notam that the government hasn't ever come down on any debate not involving hate speech or obvious and dangerous misinformation.
When the issue concerns a bunch of conspiracy nuts and racists insisting they have a right to be heard I actually don't find it concerning at all that the government has, in many european countries, banned the expression of those beliefs.
I used to hold it as important that the nazis and lunatics were able to say their piece in public so the rest of us could be reminded and warned what sort of monsters and deluded folk were out there. These days however, that's not necessary. What those benighted morons say in closed chambers will be raised to public awareness soon enough.
That being the case there is no need to mandate that the people with the equivalent urges of fetishized public defecation be guaranteed an audience.
"...pretty much any video that is not on the government line with regards to Corona or Russia will be deleted pretty much immediately."
Ah, yes, the ones saying the pandemic is a hoax/jewish bioweapon/curable with enough homeopathy and that Russia is justly governed under Great Leader Vladimir Putin?
The deletion of those videos aren't because the tyrannical EU wants them gone. It's because no platform wants to carry russian shills and conspiracy nuts when it drives away most of the audience.
"This means that the Chinese government is coming off less like a socialist nation and more akin to something like the Taliban, where strict control over culture is seen as some kind of spiritual requirement. "
Timothy, there's something I think you may need brought to your attention; When it comes to China strict control over culture has been the first overriding priority of government for two and a half millennia.
China has a long history of famines, social upheavals, anarchy, revolutions, etc - all of which led, in the end, to dynastic shifts after a great deal of suffering. And the country took a lesson from that history.
1) Social upheaval disrupts government.
2) Weak government causes massive harm through bad flood control, insufficient food production & storage, local warlordism and banditry, sectarian violence, organized crime and foreign usurpation and occupation.
3) *Suffering of the people causes social upheaval. Goto 1.
China will go, as they have in the past, to any length to preserve order. Controlling culture and social engineering is part and parcel of this. All of the Golden Shield project (great firewall, social credit ratings, border control) is an attempt to prevent chinese culture from changing. This is the core belief they have in autocracy. That government must be strong and remain completely, utterly unchallenged.
"If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in."
Deng Xiaoping, 1980's, favorite saying re foreign influence.
The perception is that any change in chinese culture eventually leads to the loss of government control and subsequent disaster as the nation fractions into warring tribes who then go on to starve because the emerging warlords won't give a tinker's damn about food production, sanitation, transportation and health care. It may take China another millennia before they acknowledge that with more modern science many of those issues which shaped their culture are simply no longer relevant.
But up until that point the PRC will always come down hard on any phenomenon which may threaten their culture. Foreign influence. Games. Religions growing too big. Corporations growing too influential. Provinces and minorities advocating secession or autonomy.
Emperors and dynasties may come and go. Prominent politicians and institutions just the face which needs to be preserved to accommodate the illusion of infallibility.
In the end all of chinese politics are as pragmatic as a knife fight. Utterly unburdened with any principle other than don't lose control. And the unceasing byzantine politics of the internal a necessity to make sure that none of the competing parties are ever seen as challenging the central authority.
As emperors go the Pooh Bear has a fairly strong standing. If he states video games are harmful to chinese culture then the bureaucracy's overblown reaction isn't just understandable. It was predictable ever since he was quoted as saying things to that effect.
"I wonder how much this will accelerate the pop of China's economic bubble."
None at all. At least not while we in the west ensure China has a steady job in being our supply chain.
China can afford to beat their home industry up quite mercilessly because it all floats on a foundation of job security and money freely offered by western industries willing to bend over backwards to kiss the Pooh Bear's ringpiece as long as it means access to the market containing 1/6th of the world's population, and the convenience of not having to own a single factory in the Land Of Tort.
Re: Re:
"Now, who is that government going to find as a more interesting target for further surveillance, those who records can be accessed on demand if they want them, or those who are hiding their activity."
That's a fallacious argument.
THIS^ is the way most intel agencies operate. A few years back in Sweden an electrician had been communicating with a customer re a job. He'd used technical jargon and explained his explosive migraine made it impossible to finish the job today. He and his wife woke to find their door kicked in and masked individuals aiming rifles at their children. Not an experience I'd wish on anyone and one where tragedy was averted by luck alone.
The safest is to not provide anyone the ability to read anything you send - because the algorithm flagging keywords can't read context. Your communications being unreadable may or may not raise eyebrows somewhere but they also won't risk triggering enough unfortunate keywords to have a message sent to the local SWAT team with your address and a Code Red assault order.
Re: Re: Re:
"Personally, I'll stop using VPNs when the companies I use for commercial and banking stop using them to protect their own data."
This right there. When companies handling large sums of money start forgoing an intranet...that's when I'll stop using one as well.
Re:
"Let me guess, this narrative is being pushed by ISP's, data brokers and others that would like easy access to tracking all of your internet searches/history."
Probably not. Ten years ago implementation of encryption of any kind was often suspect at best and most routers were even leakier sieves than they are today. Some browsers might as well have come with built-in backdoors given the way they handled https, and too damn many webpages were still on old plaintext http.
That said VPN's still have a great deal of use today. It just isn't ubiquitously necessary.
VPN's still have a lot of use but given their popularity in a world where governments compete to be the next DDR Caveat Emptor applies more than ever before.
Re: Re: Re: same old song
"Hey, don't lump Winnie-the-Pooh in with the ex tangerine in chief."
True that. I may not care much for his Beariness Emperor Xi but I'll at least credit the thin-skinned fellow with more moxie than the average toddler. Can't say the same for Il Duce Arancione.
Re: Re: same old song
"The point of regulation is to (a) satisfy those who think private firms are inherently evil and need restraint over and above the ordinary rules of honest business (honor contracts, don't mislead, don't steal, don't lie, don't screw people, etc.)"
You mean, like Eisenhower did?
Yes, private corporations are inherently amoral. Given the opportunity most of them will gladly traffic children if doing so would get them better margins this quarter and it didn't land them in hot water. We really don't need more evidence on this by now.
And the thing is, that is how a corporation is supposed to work. The one and only thing they should care about is the profit provided the shareholders.
Take a long, good luck at the US today. Show me one single example where the business model isn't primarily made of grift. Where a single major company wouldn't be willing to pour poison in the water mains if it meant raising the Q1 profit.
"while (b) ensuring that the industry is successful and profitable (whether it deserves to be or not)"
I reference 2008-2009. Where lack of regulation resulted in a collapse which suddenly forced two presidents from either extreme end of the aisle to compete in bailing the major industries out because the 401(k)'s of the common citizen was pending on those industries not collapsing. Classical old republicans hauled out the old line about how everyone was a keynesian now.
"(c) providing a mechanism to erect barriers to entry to new firms who'd like to lower prices or innovate, which could lead to existing players seeing reduced profit or a lot of work."
Again, back here in the real world history paints a different picture where, once again, lack of regulations is what has provided businesses the monopoly status carrying the ability to run the newcomers out of business.
I honestly don't get it, OldMugWump. You people live in the reality which has given all those three assertions of yours the lie.
While europeans, living in incredibly regulated markets, are offered more choice than ever at lower prices and higher quality. Just when did the US begin parroting the blind old propaganda of the USSR about their failing system? Because I know for a fact that as recent as Eisenhower you guys were singing a completely different tune.
Re: Re: unfortnately
"ya right.. lets throw trillions of dollars at social bs... that can't be maintained..."
You realize the rest of the G20 does exactly that, and we maintain it just fine.
I shouldn't be surprised that Every. Damn. Time universal health care, decent living wages or helping the poor comes up, some alt-right fsckwit shows up and tells us it's impossible for the US to do what the rest of the world has successfully lived with for fifty years or more.
"just because you have wealth, status, plenty of activities, and mobility, doesn't mean that criminal activity is off the table."
If poor people commit 99% of crimes and the wealthy perform 1% of crimes that's not a valid comparison.
There is no higher driver of criminality than poverty. Doubting that stopped being a thing among educated people three centuries ago.
It always gets me, how a certain type of witless asshat can keep advocating forking over ten pounds of cure, to the tune of gagging bagfuls of money, rather than spend a tenth that amount on prevention.
Re:
"Politicians love to “treat” symptoms without thinking about treating (or discovering) their root cause."
Root causes are expensive, complex and require persistent treatment.
Far simpler just to prescribe some aspirin.
If you are a successful politician you may have picked the proper base to address - the one happier with the aspirin providing the appearance of relief than with the idea they'll have to vote you in for two terms more and wait for that time until you provide the result.
If you're a successful and hard-working politician you may have picked a base sufficiently educated and patient so as to appreciate a quick fix is never a solution.
And if you're a grifter your base will be happy enough as soon as you can point the finger at some random minority and tell them "those guys" are to blame for all their ills...and they'll cheerfully self-medicate on grievance, forgetting all their daily woes.
Weird.
I didn't know His exalted Beariness, Emperor Xi Jin Ping, was in the public domain.
Does that mean China really doesn't have a leg to stand on when we poke fun at him?
Re: Just a friendly reminder
"That China, like all of you, applaud Twitter and Facebook's censoring of people."
I wish this was the first time I had to tell some alt-right fsckwit there's a difference between a government with violence monopoly prohibiting certain speech for everyone and a private entity tossing the unpleasant asshole out of their house.
Just reminding you that you people are still being morons.
Re:
"China reads Orwell's "1984" and responds with "Pffft....hold my baijiu""
Of course they will. They invented the "1984" society in Qin Shi Huang's days and never looked back. Difference being that their desire for control and social order is based in pragmatism. Millennia of famines, revolutions, uprisings, weak governments, and warlordism have shaped what they have today - a recipe ensuring the majority of the citizenry have access to education, opportunity, commerce, and prosperity while using the minority as patsies, scapegoats and warning examples unto others.
As long as you are a "proper" chinese...productive, educated, dedicated to social ideals...your life will be good under the benevolent Divine Ursine, son of heaven. Cater to the 90% and ensure their well-being. Throw everyone who won't fall in line under the bus.
Whenever some movement arises which has adherents thinking of that movement first, China second; Sects. Buddhists. Shaolin monks. Triads. Falun Gong. Tibetans. Uighyr. Etc...come down on them like a ton of bricks.
China's government and all its representatives being excessively thin-skinned is part and parcel of this; Never let anyone doubt the current order. National face must be preserved at all cost.
Re:
"To be fair, this isn't remotely new for China."
FTFY. Information control, censorship, coming down hard on dissidents and citizens of China desiring autonomy...is millennia old.
And the PRC was communist the same way it was mongol - a brief historical aberration in a coup or revolution, and then straight back to the oligarchic ultra-authoritarianism they've always had.
You can look at Taiwan before the 70's for a glance at how China normally operates under a strong leader. It wasn't until Chang Kai-shek bit the dust and Taiwan had heavy interaction with western values that they adopted a functional form of democracy. And even there you can tell from the common free-form brawling in their assemblies that they really haven't gotten used to not having a central authority keep the room to order.
I kid you not. Go to youtube. Search for "taiwan parliamentary brawl"...watch the scrolling pages of clips featuring politicians én másse partaking in the Fight Club over every issue.
"...they're increasingly more like Nazis, especially considering they're literally a step away from doing Holocaust 2: Muslim Edition."
There's nothing "increasing" about it. And no, the closest contemporary form of nazism today would be the US GOP base. China has a rational, albeit horrible reason to do what they do. Same as the reason they came down on Falun Gong, Tibetan monks, Hong Kong believers in individual freedoms, and Winnie The Pooh.
Same as why they in olden days as an empire cracked down on buddhists, sects, and shaolin temples.
Face. Social order. A nation united.
China must appear undivided and culturally hegemonous. Every citizen of China must be a proper citizen of ancient Hua Xia. The government - whether emperors past or his present exalted Beariness - must be respected. Social order is to be preserved, unrest and dissent proactively destroyed.
This recipe is what has kept China as a nation in more or less unbroken cultural unity as a single country for thousands of years.
And the problem with telling them differently is this; You try telling a chinese politician about the merits of democracy and they will gently ask you to point out one single democracy of size to have lasted more than 500 years. You'll be able to point at a few flyspeck republics not all that democratic and of course to San Marino...and that's it. Not too surprising given that actual democracy didn't come back in vogue until about two centuries ago.
The chinese politician will likely say something along the lines of "It sounds intriguing. Can you get back to us in a thousand years or so? We'll have another look then".
China's cruelty is rooted in a pragmatic approach to order über alles which on good days comes off as a thoroughly unprincipled approach to do whatever it takes to ensure some 90% of the country is too well fed, educated and prosperous to even dream of opposing the government. While using the remaining 10% as patsies, scapegoats and examples made why it's not healthy to compare Emperor Xi to Winnie the Pooh. It's ugly. Cruel. But it works.
The same can not be said about nazism which is rooted out of a pseudo-religious tangle of lies peddled to convince the least educated and impoverished no-hope losers they are the "Chosen people" unfairly oppressed by some minority who are simultaneously subhuman inferiors AND strangely able to wield superhuman powers of oppression over the majority in the "superior" race.
Nazism only works until it's burned out every feckless moron dumb enough to believe in it since it inevitably comes into conflict with factual reality and science.
China's autocracy otoh, seems to work pretty well for the most part if what you want is a cohesive national entity remaining largely unchanged for a few millennia.
Re: Re: Re:
"When one of the options for a political office is Trump it's near impossible not to offer a better choice."
In reality, yes.
Look at what that base consists of though. We're looking at a lot of people with piss-poor or spotty education who were the ones hit the hardest by Reagan. And have been repeatedly told by the grifter of their choice that everything they've suffered is the democrats fault since they were old enough to walk.
Adherents of the american cult of ignorance Asimov wrote off, who grew up to believe education was unamerican - only to find out that without a college degree the only job they could hold was one they'd have to spend ten hour working days on to make ends meet.
To get through the day they self-medicate on that cheap and readily available drug of grievance they are fed in such bountiful supply by the GOP.
The democrats could win that base over, no sweat. They just have to stop talking in big words and start telling the GOP base whom to hate in simple catchy one-liners and talking points.
The better choice doesn't even have to do with politics, facts, or the prosperity of the citizenry now. It revolves around the candidate able to come up with the best chant to hold daily two minute hate sessions around.
Re: Re:
"Unfortunately, since its inception, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been irreparably tainted by its use as a political instrument."
In smaller scale plenty of countries have found their immigration bureaus tainted from the start. Apparently setting up an agency dedicated to keeping, mainly, non-white foreigners out of the country attracts a lot of people dedicated to racist ideals.
Who knew, right?
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I refer to you the sentence the AC led with; "Regarding the 'compromised security' claim. It's simply not true that the only ones complaining about it are publishers."
This is where he gives credence to the "compromised security" claim from the publishers.
As others have also noted, his reasoning is...a bit skewed in the importance he places on "bulk downloading".
Yes, stolen credentials can be a hazard depending on the access those credentials provide.
But I have enough of a background in both STEM and IT to tell you that the access allowing bulk downloads of scientific articles do not pose a threat to the network. That part is bullshit from start to end.
A "threat" comes from credentials which allow vectors of attack or access to confidential documents. If the user network consists of more than ten people a presumptive attacker having similar access is already taken for granted and the network hardened against this precise eventuality.
The thing which raises my hackles here is that the AC describes a situation which could never happen. The credentials "stolen" would be the access login to Elsevier's page - not the university network.
There is only one thing threatening that university network - Elsevier going bananas over bulk downloads and demanding the university come down like a ton of bricks on whatever researcher shared their login and password to Elsevier's pages with undergrads and postdocs. A legal threat, nothing to do with security.
Re: Re: Say What?
"Shut the fuck up with your crap, all you're doing is heading down Koby-lane..."
Look through some of "Restless94110"'s commentary. He's way beyond Koby-lane.
By now I assume he only shows up here to copy-paste some argument which went down real well in his normal Stormfront forum and he still doesn't grok why anyone outside of that place refuses to give him the reciprocal reacharound over him stroking their egos by affirming their beliefs in the dystopian fairy tale they cling to.
The only thing he brings to the table is a reminder that the alt-right left their sanity by the roadside years back.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Say What?
"...you essentially have to start from the position that either the democrats across the country are vastly smarter and more able to plan than the republicans involved, the republicans involved are incredibly stupid and easy to fool, or a mix of the two."
Less entertaining when you consider that exact scenario is one of the more telling defining characteristics of fascists; The opposition is simultaneously contemptibly weak, feeble-minded and easily intimidated cowards - while at the same time being capable of persistent superhuman feats of power when it comes to oppressing the "Chosen Ones".
I refer to you here the nazi mythology of the jewish untermensch along with their belief that subhuman epitome of cowardice and short-sighted self-destructive greed managed to rule the damn world through super-secret shadow cabals.
Just recall Marjorie Taylor-Greene's "Jewish space lasers". In the eyes of the conspiracy nut the "opposition" is always portrayed as a superhuman capable of mind control and time travel while having access to super sci-fi technology. While being "inferior".
"'There's no solid evidence because the other side is way smarter than us' makes for an interesting argument/own-goal to say the least."
I used to counter neo-nazi conspiracy nuts with the statement "Gosh, we all need to convert to judaism. If you are to be believed we get super-powers and access to the Death Star if we do".
Re: Re: Re: Youtube is a great example to illustrate how ...
"There's usually not only 2 sides to any discussion, so if you pretend any debate is binary you're already on a losing track."
That too, to be sure.
But the trend right now isn't that there are more than two sides. It's that one side uses factual reality as a basis and the other irately demands something be done about the invisible unicorns messing up the equally unperceivable ley lines in the back yard of the imperceptible sky wizard.
Democrat politician: "Let us discuss the deplorable state of health care and the pandemic to which more than 800000 americans have fallen in a mere two years..."
Republican grifter: "Screw your lies! What are we going to do about Liberal Sauron's man-eating orc horde about to emerge from Mordor and KILL US ALL ANY DAY NOW?!"
Republican grifter #2: "Ah heard they dun trafficked Red Riding Hood! We gun' defund the poh-leese when dat shit happens?"
Republican grifter #3: "It's the wrath of GOD! Repent, Sinners! And give all your money to the Chosen One that he may build us a wall against the unholy forces of the mexican rapist!"
There's not a plurality of sides in a debate here...It's one side bringing facts to the table and another side flipping that table while belting out dystopian fairy tales and thinly veiled reruns of Der Stürmer. If you could have described it as one side just being less credible I, for one, would be happy.
But you can't. The reality is that there are no two sides because there's only one side trying to debate. The other is shitting on the table and howling at the moon.
Re: Youtube is a great example to illustrate how ...
"Freedom of expression means that anybody who chooses do so should be entitled to listen to both sides before making up their own opinion, rather than being forced to have the government do that for them."
That would be a good point to make...if there were "two sides" in most of these debates. And I'll take ad notam that the government hasn't ever come down on any debate not involving hate speech or obvious and dangerous misinformation.
When the issue concerns a bunch of conspiracy nuts and racists insisting they have a right to be heard I actually don't find it concerning at all that the government has, in many european countries, banned the expression of those beliefs.
I used to hold it as important that the nazis and lunatics were able to say their piece in public so the rest of us could be reminded and warned what sort of monsters and deluded folk were out there. These days however, that's not necessary. What those benighted morons say in closed chambers will be raised to public awareness soon enough.
That being the case there is no need to mandate that the people with the equivalent urges of fetishized public defecation be guaranteed an audience.
"...pretty much any video that is not on the government line with regards to Corona or Russia will be deleted pretty much immediately."
Ah, yes, the ones saying the pandemic is a hoax/jewish bioweapon/curable with enough homeopathy and that Russia is justly governed under Great Leader Vladimir Putin?
The deletion of those videos aren't because the tyrannical EU wants them gone. It's because no platform wants to carry russian shills and conspiracy nuts when it drives away most of the audience.
Nice try.
But...that's always been the case.
"This means that the Chinese government is coming off less like a socialist nation and more akin to something like the Taliban, where strict control over culture is seen as some kind of spiritual requirement. "
Timothy, there's something I think you may need brought to your attention; When it comes to China strict control over culture has been the first overriding priority of government for two and a half millennia.
China has a long history of famines, social upheavals, anarchy, revolutions, etc - all of which led, in the end, to dynastic shifts after a great deal of suffering. And the country took a lesson from that history.
1) Social upheaval disrupts government.
2) Weak government causes massive harm through bad flood control, insufficient food production & storage, local warlordism and banditry, sectarian violence, organized crime and foreign usurpation and occupation.
3) *Suffering of the people causes social upheaval. Goto 1.
China will go, as they have in the past, to any length to preserve order. Controlling culture and social engineering is part and parcel of this. All of the Golden Shield project (great firewall, social credit ratings, border control) is an attempt to prevent chinese culture from changing. This is the core belief they have in autocracy. That government must be strong and remain completely, utterly unchallenged.
The perception is that any change in chinese culture eventually leads to the loss of government control and subsequent disaster as the nation fractions into warring tribes who then go on to starve because the emerging warlords won't give a tinker's damn about food production, sanitation, transportation and health care. It may take China another millennia before they acknowledge that with more modern science many of those issues which shaped their culture are simply no longer relevant.
But up until that point the PRC will always come down hard on any phenomenon which may threaten their culture. Foreign influence. Games. Religions growing too big. Corporations growing too influential. Provinces and minorities advocating secession or autonomy.
Emperors and dynasties may come and go. Prominent politicians and institutions just the face which needs to be preserved to accommodate the illusion of infallibility.
In the end all of chinese politics are as pragmatic as a knife fight. Utterly unburdened with any principle other than don't lose control. And the unceasing byzantine politics of the internal a necessity to make sure that none of the competing parties are ever seen as challenging the central authority.
As emperors go the Pooh Bear has a fairly strong standing. If he states video games are harmful to chinese culture then the bureaucracy's overblown reaction isn't just understandable. It was predictable ever since he was quoted as saying things to that effect.
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"I wonder how much this will accelerate the pop of China's economic bubble."
None at all. At least not while we in the west ensure China has a steady job in being our supply chain.
China can afford to beat their home industry up quite mercilessly because it all floats on a foundation of job security and money freely offered by western industries willing to bend over backwards to kiss the Pooh Bear's ringpiece as long as it means access to the market containing 1/6th of the world's population, and the convenience of not having to own a single factory in the Land Of Tort.